Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

This shows Tesla and Che, and that's me in the background taking their picture. The pictures that follow show Che in the laundry basket during different times. He jumps in as soon as he sees a full laundry basket. The last three pictures show Che stretching (doing Yoga) in the morning.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Hendri Go forwarded this article by Chinggay Utzurrum about the book launch of my novel Magdalena in Cebu last February 11, 2017. The event was organized by Hendri Go in conjunction with an Open Mic Reading at the Parkmall.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

My Guest Blogger is Filipina poet Mila D. Aguilar whose nom de guerre in the Philippine martial law underground was Clarita Roja, which means Clear Red. When she was born again in 1990, the Red came to mean the Blood of Christ. Many thanks to Mila D. Aguilar for sharing her work. ~ Cecilia Brainard

~~~

Theater
of the Absurd

By
Mila D. Aguilar

"For
many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the
coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the
antichrist."

(2 John 1:7)

Ladies
and gentlemen

Behold

The
Theater of the Absurd.

Before
you,

In
real life but onstage

Good
as dead.

Nothing
here is real but

Everything
is.

Contradictions
abound

But

Consistency's
the point.

Don't

Hold
your breath, exhale it.

Satire

Overturned.
It's on you,

Not
the comic.

It's
on us, not the farce.

You

Are
the farce this time,

Onstage

Is
real as hell is real.

Reel

Is
you, keep on keeling

As
he kills.

The
future is here, folks.

No
time

To
hide or play nightmare

Unfolding

Before
you right now

Without

Compunction
while eliciting

Sympathy.

Oh,
tears! Asking for gentleness

Babes.

The
comic's no Lothario,

No!

He
doesn't go for married women,

Mestizas

Met
in Hongkong for the tryst.

Faithful

To
two only. Telenovela of our time.

Opening

Tomorrow.

~~

Wikipedia's Bio of Mila D. Aguilar follows:

Mila D. Aguilar(born 1949) is aFilipinapoet, revolutionary, essayist, teacher, video documentarian, and website designer. She wrote the poetry booksA Comrade is as Precious as a Rice SeedlingandJourney: An Autobiography in Verse (1964-1995).

As a poet, she has written about 400 poems in English, Filipino, and Ilonggo, about 125 of which are in Journey: An Autobiography in Verse (1964-1995), a collection published by the University of the Philippines Press in 1996. The poems in this collection were culled from six books printed in Manila, San Francisco, and New York City between the years 1974 and 1987 (including A Comrade is as Precious as a Rice Seedling), as well as from her writing in subsequent years up to 1995. Chronicle of a Life Foretold: 101 Poems (1995-2005) was published in 2012 by Popular Bookstore, and two more collections Poetry as Prophecy (2005-2013), and an untitled book, remain unpublished.

In 1971, Aguilar went underground, disagreeing with the policies of the Philippine government; she was arrested in 1984.

Aguilar has also written more than a hundred essays. A handful of these were done when she went "underground", first as an ordinary member, later as head of the Regional United Front Commission of Mindanao, and finally as head of the National United Front Commission of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the rebel organization from which she resigned in 1984.

She has produced, written, and directed almost 50 videos on subjects ranging from community organizations to regional cultures and good manners for government employees.

As a "webweaver", a term she invented,[citation needed] she has designed her own web pages as well as the website of a non-governmental organization.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.

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Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of 10 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Vigan and Other Stories, and Out of Cebu: Essays and Personal Prose. She edited four books, co-edited six books, and co-authored a novel, Angelica's Daughters.
Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants from the USIS.
She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.